Sunday Book Review: Making It Home

Making it Home: My year as a middle-aged runaway

by Liz Moore

I’m not even sure how to begin to say just how much I enjoyed this book. Let’s call it an adventure story for women approaching middle age. It’s a book about that thing we’ve often imagined ourselves doing. At least, I have always loved the idea of living elsewhere, getting to know new places and people by becoming a part of the community, and living (for a while, at least) without ties or roots or personal history.

Liz Moore was one of the presenters at the 2011 Kansas Authors Club Convention. I was so enthralled by her story that I purchased the book online for my Kindle PC free e-reader almost first thing when I got home. (For some reason I was under the impression that the book was only available for Kindle, but I now see that it is available in paperback, as well, which is all the better because this book would make a great gift.)

Liz gave herself a gift for her fiftieth birthday. She packed her car and began a cross country journey that would take her from Texas to Arizona to Oregon to Iowa to Vermont. She selected small towns along the way and lived in them, a few months at a time, working for temp agencies and doing things like cleaning and waitressing as she went.

Liz writes her story so wonderfully that you feel yourself along for the ride, wondering how she’s going to find affordable housing and where she will work next. You learn a little bit about each place she stays. The people she meets along the way are all so wonderfully human, and Liz’s ability to settle into a new place and a new routine constantly amazed me.

The year didn’t go exactly as she had planned, but even the way she incorporated the heartache and the sorrow into the story made it just that much better. As the title suggests, she eventually makes it home.

I’ve recommended this book to my book club. I think anyone who has ever experienced even a bit of wanderlust would appreciate Liz’s story.

 *reposted from my previous blog entry on 3/23/2013 TS

Sunday Book Review: The Jenny Cain Mystery Series

As my current work-in-progress is a mystery (my first), I’ve found a lot of my leisure reading leaning in that direction, as well. My grandmother and my aunt were big fans of the mystery genre. I remember staying overnight with Grandma and flipping through the pages, at night, of the dozens of Ellery Queen’s that were stacked neatly on her headboard.

I’ve found myself less-than-satisfied, however, with the cozy mysteries I’ve picked off the shelf at various bookstores in the last few months and at the library, with so many options, I’ve had trouble committing to any one author. I finally took a look at my bookshelf and decided to take a more methodical approach to my reading with an author I already knew and loved.

Nancy Pickard’s career as an author began with the Jenny Cain mystery series. I started with her first book, A Generous Death and immediately liked Nancy’s heroine, Jenny Cain. It has been fun to read the stories and watch the characters develop. Each book has also had a little introduction or bit on writing by the author or an editor, as well. These might be the pieces that many readers ignore, but I cherish the insights to the writing process when I’m reading a story. It helps to have Nancy’s voice in my head, as well, as I’ve been fortunate to listen to her speak at two different Kansas Authors Club events.

As I write this, I have completed Say No to Murder and Marriage is Murder (my favorite so far), and am just getting started on the book, I.O.U. Initially, I thought I’d just read a book or two of the series, but I’ve enjoyed them enough I just may read through to the end of the series.

Post Script: I did read all the way through to the end of them, and I enjoyed every page.

 *reposted from my previous blog entry on 3/23/2013 TS

Sunday Book Review: The Rocking Horse

The Rocking Horse

by Gloria Zachgo

Every year at the Kansas Authors Club convention, I make a point of meeting and getting to know someone I’ve never met before. In Coffeyville this year, I was able to share a table at breakfast with new Kansas Authors Club member and new author, Gloria Zachgo, and her husband Ron. Bonus! A new member to add to my writing friend collection and an autographed book.

Gloria's first novel, The Rocking Horse, is available through Create Space. It can also be found on Amazon.

The story takes place in Kansas and completely passes my test for a Kansas book. The author obviously knows the state and appreciates its people. It was easy, as a reader, to settle into a setting that was at once familiar, though fictitious.

The Rocking Horse is a story of suspense and mystery. It examines the effects on a small town of a decades-old, brutal murder, and the characters, who are immediately likeable, finally get some closure. As happy as endings can get in a story that starts out with such violence, this one is tops.

I thoroughly enjoyed Gloria’s first novel and am looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.

 *reposted from my previous blog entry on 3/23/2013 TS

Sunday Book Review: Flyover People

Flyover People is a collection of essays about my state -- Kansas. Yep, I'll claim it, though Cheryl is the one who has put it into words, what it means to be from Kansas, to choose Kansas, to love Kansas and its people.

Memories and experiences become part of who we are. Kansas seeps into our cells, reconfigures our DNA, claims us as its own. If we leave, it follows.

And from another essay...

We never lose this sense of being grounded, of knowing who we are and why we're here, of being nurtured by the soil and the grass and the stars.

Cheryl is the person who pays attention to the roadside ditches, the dusty roads, and the small town corner stores, and makes you want to look again, to pay attention too. She's a person who appreciates what I love about Kansas and takes the time to put it into words. I love reading her weekly columns in the newspaper and I love the collection she has put together for this book.

But it's not just a love of wide open sky that Cheryl writes about. She shares bits and pieces of herself, as well, and you get to know the small towns of our state as you catch little glimpses of the girl who grew up in a place called Pawnee Rock and constructed tin can telephones and began her writing career at the Larned Tiller and Toiler newspaper.  

Cheryl's essays have always made me want to slow down, take a back road to get where I'm going, and look a bit harder at each signpost I pass by. I want to share these gems with Kansas doubters -- my Houstonian friends who wondered why on earth I'd return to such a place as Kansas, the California transplants who seem incapable of seeing Kansas beauty, and the friends from other states who wonder why I will not leave.

I'm sure there's a lot to be appreciated about other places and people, but Kansas is my place. Kansans are my people. Maybe it really is as deep as my DNA. Life on the ground in a rectangle state is pretty good, and my friend Cheryl captures it beautifully.

 *reposted from my previous blog entry on 3/23/2013 TS